1. Field of the Disclosure
The invention relates generally to image and video online processing and in particular to a system and method for processing images acquired in real time and especially images acquired through a medical device.
2. Background Art
Online processing of the data is critical for applications such as video surveillance, industrial inspection, robotics and biomedical imaging. For example, video processing may be of interest in endoscopy and endomicroscopy. Patent application US2005207668 presents for example a system to restore in real-time images acquired through a bundle of fiber-optics typically used in endomicroscopy.
Image and video processing techniques are commonly used in digital video acquisition devices. The main purpose of such algorithms is to extract useful information from data. This can mean anything from the simplest visualization enhancement to fully-automatic image-based decision making during surgery.
For example, during an endoscopy, the physician's attention might be caught by a specific detail of a video sequence from a given part of a tissue. In order to examine the interesting image, the physician may need said image to be processed. Online image processing may notably be run through real time processing or lagged-time processing. Real time processing may only be implemented when the processing time is shorter than the time between two images. Lagged-time processing may only be implemented when the processing can be completed within a time corresponding to a fixed number of images and requires to launch in parallel several processes. As lagged processing may lead to loosing the location of the investigated area on the tissue, common endoscopy systems provide a freeze function which enables to stop on a given image. By freezing upon demand the display, the physician is given more time to analyze the image and make a diagnosis. Freezing the video at the exact time asked by the physician may result in freezing a bad, blurred image. U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,901,143 and 5,270,810 propose a processing that selects a frozen image which is at the same time a good image and is close to the freezing time asked by the clinician. U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,901,143 and 5,270,810 also disclose freezing upon demand and address the issue of keeping the information contained in the part of the video sequence that occurs during the freeze period by using two parallel pipelines. However, common techniques are essentially limited by the inner quality or amount of information of the frozen images.
The present disclosure proposes a method and a system that enables to enhance information retrieval during ongoing video acquisitions.